2025 Articles

Intergenerational Inferences about Punishment: Judgments of Children of Incarcerated Parents across Development

Gerdin, Emily; Goel, Devyani; Dunlea, James; Solomon, Larisa Heiphetz

Some scholars argue that punishment communicates information about punished individuals. We extended this theorizing by asking whether laypeople (237 5- to 6-year-olds, 221 7- to 8-year-olds, 220 adults) understand punishment as communicating messages about individuals not directly implicated in punishment-related scenarios and how this understanding might change across development. Three studies asked U.S. 5- to 8-year-olds and adults to indicate the extent to which they believe that adults’ incarceration is attributable to their biological relatives. In Study 1, children were more likely than adults to indicate that people grow up to become incarcerated because of an incarcerated biological mother, and these judgments generalized across members of different racial groups. In Study 2, 5- to 6-year-olds, versus 7- to 8-year-olds and adults, more readily predicted that individuals born to an incarcerated mother would have contact with the legal system in the future. Study 3 showed evidence of age-related changes in essentialism using a questionnaire but did not find such evidence in a task that pitted essentialist and nonessentialist explanations against each other, suggesting that 5- to 6-year-olds may view both biological and social factors as important contributors to incarceration. Taken together, these studies highlight the importance of social learning and cognitive development in shaping reasoning about punishment’s messages.

Keywords: child development; developmental psychology; incarceration; moral cognition; psychological essentialism; psychology; punishment; social cognition; social cognitive development; social psychology